Swamp Team 3 (A Miss Fortune Mystery)

by DeLeon, Jana

  The possibilities of what could happen if Ida Belle and Gertie set out to break into the sheriff’s department by themselves flashed through my mind like a Three Stooges episode on fast-forward.

  “Can we go with this option first?” I asked. “Bail for trespassing is going to be a lot lower than bail for breaking and entering.”

  “Good point,” Ida Belle said and rose from her chair. “Hurry up, Gertie. You’re always lagging.”

  Gertie grunted as she bent over to tie her last tennis shoe. “You never let up—‘you should exercise more,’ ‘get new glasses’—now I guess you’re going to try to push that newfangled yoga crap on me just because I don’t think touching my head to my knees represents a skill set I need or a good time.”

  I shook my head. “You disarmed that killer in your house with an incredible kick. Totally Bruce Lee stuff, and that was only a few weeks ago. How can you be in such bad shape now?”

  Gertie rose from the chair. “I limped for two days after that kick, and had to use ice and a heating pad for a week. My body hasn’t forgotten my martial arts training, and can pull off a move or two in a pinch, but I always pay for it later.”

  Ida Belle frowned. “Then I’m surprised you’re not in traction from all the falling off fences and out of trees that you’ve done lately.”

  “I didn’t fall,” Gertie argued. “I miscalculated the distance in the dark.”

  “It wasn’t dark when you fell out of the tree at the funeral,” I pointed out.

  Gertie glared at both of us for a second, then stalked out the front door.

  Ida Belle stared after her, shaking her head. “You know—”

  “If she got new glasses it would solve everything,” I finished. “Her depth perception is off because of her vision. She squints a lot and lately, her head is usually cocked slightly to the right. Likely, she’s got eye strain from trying to focus and it’s giving her a headache and potentially an earache, which in turn is affecting her balance.”

  “Nice.” Ida Belle gave me an approving nod. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “In my line of work, the smallest flaw can create a big advantage. I’ve gotten lax since I’ve been in Sinful. I’m trying to get back to basics.”

  I hopped up from my chair and Ida Belle and I joined Gertie on the sidewalk outside.

  “We should head to the park,” Ida Belle said. “Ally’s house is a short hop through the swamp, just behind the picnic area.”

  I nodded. “I hope no one is picnicking. The fewer witnesses, the better.”

  Gertie wiped sweat from her brow. “It was ninety-two degrees when I left my house, and a hundred percent humidity given that a storm is brewing. No one in their right mind would be picnicking right now.”

  Sure, I thought, but how many Sinful residents were in their right mind?

  I fell in step next to Ida Belle, who set off at a brisk pace for the park. Gertie huffed behind us, and I wondered if she’d make it to the park, much less through the swamp. But then I had no room to talk. I’d finally jumped on a scale this morning and had almost screamed at the horror.

  Five pounds!

  I’d gained five pounds since I’d arrived in Sinful. If this is what happened when one converted to civilian life, I may have to skip retirement. If I didn’t do something soon, I wouldn’t pass the physical for a mission, and I’d have to shop for new clothes. It was the shopping for new clothes part that scared me the most.

  As I felt my hamstrings tighten, I made a deal with myself—from now on, only one bad food item a day, and I had to run at least five miles every morning to counteract the bad food. Marge had some free weights in her bedroom closet. I probably needed to haul those out as well.

  “We can cut across here,” Ida Belle said and stepped off the sidewalk and into the park.

  We cut diagonally across the park and through the picnic area, which was empty, as predicted.

  “Hold up for a second,” Gertie said as we stepped into the edge of the swamp. “I’ve been thinking about things.”

  Ida Belle raised an eyebrow. “What things?”

  “Things like the fire not being set by a professional.”

  “Well, we already knew that before Carter said anything,” Ida Belle said.

  “Really?” I asked. “How?”

  Ida Belle shrugged. “Because it was only dusk. A professional would have waited until dark to avoid being seen.”

  I nodded. “And that’s a logical thought except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Assuming the arsonist is a Sinful resident, no one would think anything of seeing them walking or driving down the street, or walking through the swamp.

  Gertie’s eyes widened. “She’s right. We keep going into these things with some shadowy image of the bad guy, but we keep forgetting that it’s probably someone we already know.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” Ida Belle said, “but people would notice a man walking down the sidewalk with a gas can. Anyone who saw him would assume he ran out of gas and stop to offer a ride.”

  I shrugged. “So he went through the swamp, hid the can beforehand, and then returned later to set the fire.”

  “Before dark.” Ida Belle shook her head. “One indicates clever. The other plain stupid.”

  “Creeping around my house wearing a makeshift mask is plain stupid, too,” I said, “but somebody did it. Who else has a reason to besides our arsonist?”

  “Okay,” Ida Belle said. “I’ll play along. Let’s say the arsonist took the same path that we are to Ally’s house to avoid being seen by any residents who were out and about. Why hide the can? If he’s ballsy or stupid enough to torch the house before dark, then why come back later? Why not just do it while he was there?”

  “Because Ally was cooking,” I said, “and the kitchen is on the back of the house.”

  Gertie nodded. “He couldn’t have entered the backyard without Ally seeing him.”

  “So either he got there and waited until she went upstairs or he left the can and came back later. Either way, he might have left a clue—footprints, a cigarette—and that’s what we’re going to look for. I can’t see that this needs any more thinking.”

  “What if he lived next door?” Gertie asked.

  Ida Belle and I both stared.

  “What?” Gertie asked. “You said it was probably someone we already knew. He has to live somewhere, doesn’t he?”

  I frowned. “That sounds too easy.”

  “But it would be clever,” Ida Belle said, “or plain stupid.”

  “Who lives next door to Ally?”

  “Floyd Guidry,” Ida Belle said and frowned. “Gertie may be onto something.”

  “I take it this Floyd is a problem?” I asked.

  Gertie nodded. “You best believe it. The first time Floyd was arrested he was still in kindergarten.”

  I stared. “Then shouldn’t he be rotting in prison by now?”

  Ida Belle frowned. “He got smarter. Skirts on just this side of the law, based on what you can see. But who knows what else he’s got going on.”

  “He’s mean as a snake, too,” Gertie said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Ally had problems with him.”

  “But Carter asked her,” I said, “and she couldn’t think of anyone.”

  “Maybe he didn’t come to mind because it’s the norm,” Gertie suggested.

  “Well, no use speculating about it,” I said. “Let’s get going on this and we’ll ask Ally about him when we get back to my house.”

  We cut through the swamp toward the back of Ally’s house. About fifteen minutes in, I caught a flicker of color through the trees and figured we were getting close. Then I heard the sound of water.

  “Is that the bayou?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Ida Belle said. “It runs right behind Ally’s house.”

  Gertie came to a dead stop and put her hands on her hips. “You’re right. What the heck are we doing tromping through the swamp when we
could have taken a boat?”

  Ida Belle lifted one eyebrow. “Really? What boat, exactly, do you suggest we take—mine, which is still in the shop having the hull repaired, or yours, which was pulled from the bottom of the bayou two days ago and may never run again?”

  Since both situations lay primarily at Gertie’s feet, I figured I’d keep my mouth shut on this one. Gertie frowned, then huffed, and I thought she was going to argue, but she must have thought better of it.

  “Whatever,” she said and waved a hand in dismissal as she stomped off toward Ally’s house.

  We fell in step behind her. The closer we came to the neighborhood, the more building detail I could see, which didn’t make much sense at the height I was looking. What I expected to see was a fence. When we got about twenty feet away, I realized what the problem was.

  “Ally has a wrought iron fence,” I said. “The only place to hide is behind her shed, and he’d have to get there first without being seen.”

  Ida Belle frowned. “It used to be wood.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “Until yesterday, it’s probably been a year or more since I’ve been inside the house. Ally’s mother isn’t exactly a likable person, so no one really wanted to see her when she was well. When she got sick, she refused to let anyone inside the house except Ally.”

  “Who she treated like a slave,” Gertie threw in.

  Ida Belle nodded. “I have no idea when she made the change to the fence, but we know for sure it was before the arson. So we take this into account and move forward.”

  “Why are there only two houses here in this stretch?” I asked. “I thought Ally’s house was part of the neighborhood.” It had been almost dark when I’d arrived at Ally’s house the night before with Carter. The streetlights had provided most of the visibility, and that wasn’t stellar. I’d seen tall hedges and the tree line nearby, but had been too distracted to realize there weren’t more houses in this row besides Ally’s and Floyd’s.

  “She’s in the neighborhood,” Ida Belle said, “but the way the bayou snakes around, you couldn’t put houses on either side of Ally and Floyd’s places. The ground was too unstable. A builder tried once, but the foundation cracked to pieces within a week.”

  I peered into the swamp in both directions but couldn’t see anything but green and brown. “How far away are their next-door neighbors?”

  “About fifty yards in either direction,” Ida Belle said.

  “So Ally and Floyd are isolated.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “On the sides, they are, but there are houses across the street.”

  Right. I remembered that the neighbor who’d reported the fire lived across the street. I studied the property line of the two homes. “I suppose the arsonist could have hidden behind Floyd’s fence, but with the placement of that tree, his view of the kitchen window wouldn’t be very clear.”

  “We’ve already decided he was either clever or stupid,” Gertie said. “If we’re going to assume it’s a Sinful resident, I say we move forward with the stupid idea and look for clues behind Floyd’s fence and Ally’s shed.”

  I nodded. “Then let’s spread out along Floyd’s fence line and look for bare areas on the ground where we may be able to spot a footprint.”

  We separated, and with a distance of roughly thirty feet between us, moved toward Floyd’s fence, canvassing the ground as we progressed. When we reached the back of the fence, I looked over to my left at Ida Belle and Gertie, and they both shook their heads.

  They headed over and Ida Belle shook her head.

  “Not even a smudge in the mud,” she said, “much less a cigarette or matchbook or any of the things you see on television.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know why I hoped something might be easy.”

  “No matter,” Ida Belle said. “This is still what police look at first, so if we want to conduct a real investigation, we have to do the things they will do.”

  Gertie nodded and leaned back against Floyd’s dilapidated fence. I saw the fence panel wobble, but before I could say a word, the entire section went crashing down into Floyd’s yard, carrying Gertie with it.

  Ida Belle and I rushed over to help Gertie up. As we reached down to lift her from the mangled mess, I heard a banging noise at Floyd’s house. I looked up to see a beefy man with a bald head, wearing sweats and a white muscle shirt, stomp out the back door.

  “What the hell are you doing on my property?” he yelled.

  He reached back inside the house and pulled out a shotgun. I yanked Gertie up from the ground. “Time to jet.”

  We dashed around the back of the fence, out of Floyd’s line of sight, and kept running along the length of it, hoping we’d lose him in the swamp.

  “I’m sick of you lurking around my property. And you’re going pay for that fence!” Floyd yelled. “Get ’em, Shorty!”

  Crap! I had no idea what a “Shorty” was but I already knew I wasn’t going to like it. Visions of my past run-in with Carter’s rottweiler, Tiny, flashed through my head. This was so not good. We had zero chances of outrunning a dog.

  And in an instant, our odds got even lower.

  A roar, not associated with any dog I am familiar with, echoed through the swamp. I looked up just as a large gold animal launched off the fence directly at me.

  “A lion!” Gertie screamed and took off into the swamp faster than I’d ever seen her move before.

  The flying cat hit me directly in the shoulder and I stumbled backward. It wasn’t a lion—it was way too small—but I had a feeling the claws sticking out of the paw raised in front of me were about to make Merlin’s seem like a gentle back rub. He growled again and swiped at me, but I jumped back in time to avoid his onboard razors, my T-shirt catching the worst of the damage.

  Ida Belle yelled at the cat and swung at him with a big stick. The cat backed up and growled again, and for a moment, I thought he would pounce on Ida Belle, but in one fluid movement he whirled around and leaped back over the fence into Floyd’s yard.

  “Let’s go!” Ida Belle said and we hauled butt in the direction Gertie had fled.

  Minutes later, we burst out of the swamp and into a vacant lot. A rusty green sedan slid to a stop at the curb, and I saw Gertie frantically gesturing from the driver’s seat.

  “Hurry up! I bet anything Floyd called the police,” she yelled as we ran for the car and jumped inside.

  Ida Belle jumped into the passenger’s seat and I dove for the back, not even getting the door shut before Gertie took off from the corner like a NASCAR driver. I grabbed the front seat and pulled myself up, so many questions running through my mind, I wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Did you steal this car?” I asked, deciding to go with the worst illegal thing we might have just done.

  “Of course not,” Gertie said. “This is Maisey Jackson’s car. She always leaves the keys under the floor mat.”

  “So that people will take her car?”

  “Well, not exactly. Mostly it’s so that she can always find them. Maisey’s mind isn’t what it used to be.”

  I lowered my head, out of view of pedestrians. “You stole the car.”

  Chapter Six

  Gertie yanked the wheel to the right and I lost my grip and fell across the backseat.

  “She’s in the hospital,” Gertie said. “She’ll never know.”

  I pulled myself up again just in time for Gertie to slam on the brakes. I hit the back of the seat and my breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.

  “You should wear a seat belt,” Ida Belle said as she opened her door and jumped out. “Get a move on, will you?”

  I climbed out of the car as Gertie ran around from the driver’s side and they both took off running across lawns. A glance told me we were a couple houses down from mine, so I set out after them. We barely got the front door closed before Carter’s truck pulled down the street and stopped at the curb in front of my house.

  “Uh-oh,” Gertie s
aid as she peeked out the front window. “He looks pissed.”

  “He can’t prove anything,” Ida Belle said.

  “Look at my shirt,” I said. “It’s sorta a giveaway.” The bottom half of my T-shirt hung in ribbons.

  “He’s coming up the walkway,” Gertie said, her voice going up an octave.

  Ida Belle reached over and yanked Gertie’s necklace from around her neck, then dumped the beads off the string and into a glass bowl.

  “Hey!” Gertie whirled around but Ida Belle stopped her with a single hand in the air, then plopped down on the couch and waved at me.

  “Stand in front of me,” Ida Belle said. “Gertie, get the door.”

  Gertie looked as confused as I felt, but I hurried over to stand in front of Ida Belle, wondering how she was going to pull this one out of her butt. As Carter started banging on the front door, Ida Belle grabbed a piece of my torn T-shirt and began winding it around into a tight strand.

  Gertie looked back at us, clearly unsure this was a good route.

  “Answer it,” Ida Belle hissed as she reached for a bead.

  Gertie opened the door and Carter stepped inside. Even a blind person couldn’t have mistaken his anger. You could practically feel it. Gertie slipped around him and hurried over to the couch to sit next to Ida Belle.

  He pointed a finger at me. “I told you to stay out of my investigation, and you didn’t even wait an hour before trying to access a crime scene.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ida Belle said. “We’ve been here with Fortune for the past hour or so.”

  Carter snorted. “Oh, I’m sure you were with Fortune, but I don’t believe for a moment you were in this house the entire time.”

  “Why would you think we were anywhere else?” Ida Belle asked.

  “Because Floyd Guidry called and reported trespassers at his house who he described as a young one and two old crows.”

  “That’s rather a rude description,” Gertie said. “You should talk to Floyd about manners.”

  “Lack of manners isn’t against the law,” Carter said. “Tearing down a man’s fence and trespassing on his property is.”

  “You know darn good and well,” Ida Belle said, “that if we’d been on Floyd’s property, he would have shot us.” She threaded a bead through the twisted strand of my T-shirt and pushed it up.